Some have suggested that de Freville proposed the name Alvis as a compound of the words "aluminium" and "vis" (meaning "strength" in Latin), or perhaps it may have been derived from the Norse mythological weaponsmith, Alvíss.

The original 10/30 side-valve engine was improved, becoming by 1923 the overhead valve Alvis 12/50, a highly successful sports car that was produced until 1932.

This engine became the basis for the long line of luxurious six-cylinder Alvis cars produced up to the outbreak of the Second World War.

[citation needed] As with many upmarket engineering companies of the time, Alvis did not produce their own coachwork, relying instead on the many available coachbuilders in the Midlands area, such as Carbodies, Charlesworth Bodies, Cross & Ellis, Duncan Industries, E. Bertelli Ltd, Holbrook, Grose, Gurney Nutting, Hooper, Lancefield Coachworks, Martin Walter, Mayfair Carriage Co, Mulliners, Tickford, Vanden Plas, Weymann Fabric Bodies, and Arnold of Manchester.

Much valuable cutting gear and other equipment was lost and car production was suspended for the duration of the war, only resuming during the latter part of 1946.

Not only had Alvis lost their car factory but many of the pre-war coachbuilders had not survived either and those that had were quickly acquired by other manufacturers.

Some of the most original and beautiful designs on the Three Litre chassis were being produced by master coachbuilder Carrosserie Hermann Graber of Switzerland.

Swiss-built Graber coupés were displayed on the Alvis stand at both Paris and London Motor Shows in October 1955.

Only after late 1958 with the launch of the TD 21 did something resembling full-scale production resume as Rolls-Royce subsidiary Park Ward began to build the new bodies now modified in many small ways.

[citation needed] From 1952 to 1955 Alec Issigonis, the creator of the later Mini, worked for Alvis and designed a new model with a V8 engine which proved too expensive to produce.

A Rover-designed mid-engined V8 coupé prototype named the P6BS was rumoured to be the new Alvis model, but with the takeover by British Leyland this too was shelved.

By the time the TF 21 was launched in 1966, available, like its predecessors in both saloon and drophead form and with either manual or automatic gearbox, the model was beginning to show its age despite a top speed of 127 mph – the fastest Alvis ever produced.

With only 109 sold and with political troubles aplenty in the UK car manufacturing business at that time, production ceased in 1967.

[9] As part of Rover, Alvis Limited was incorporated into British Leyland but was bought by United Scientific Holdings plc in 1981.

[citation needed] In 2009, Red Triangle negotiated the legal transfer of the Alvis car trademarks.

All Alvis' records remain intact at the company's Kenilworth headquarters along with a large stock of period parts.

One of the men to have worked on the last Alvis car produced in 1967 is still retained by Red Triangle in a training capacity.

It differs only in detail from the pre-war examples: for emissions, the engine is governed by an electronic fuel injection system with electronic ignition, brakes are hydraulic rather than cable, the steering column collapsible and the rear light arrangement reconfigured to conform to modern standards.

Alvis and Sunbeam were at that time the only British companies building cars to Grand Prix formula racing specifications.

Of these, Alvis was the only company whose racing cars were characterized by front-wheel drive and fully independent suspension.

The Hungarian automotive engineer Nicholas Straussler had designed an armoured car (AC1) in 1932, which was built by the Manfred Weiss company under licence in Budapest.

The first AC3 – the first operational purpose-built armoured car ever produced[citation needed] – was delivered in 1937 by Alvis-Straussler Ltd, built upon the AC2 prototype.

[34] The AC2 was subsequently used as a basis for the 39M Csaba armoured scout car built for the Royal Hungarian Army during the Second World War.

[36] The FV432 tracked armoured personnel carrier and related vehicles was developed in the early 1960s by GKN Sankey and came under Alvis in 1998.

The family includes the FV101 Scorpion, FV102 Striker, FV103 Spartan, FV104 Samaritan, FV105 Sultan, FV106 Samson, FV107 Scimitar, FV4333 Stormer, and the Streaker.